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Marcella returns for a second season with the creative team behind the ITV drama promising darker and more challenging times ahead for the eponymous detective. DQ finds out more.

The first season of high-concept thriller Marcella, created by Hans Rosenfeldt and Nicola Larder and starring Anna Friel as the titular character, scattered some Scandi magic over UK broadcaster ITV’s schedule and globally via Netflix. Attracting an average 25% audience share and 6.8 million viewers, the show did the business for its network and its producer, Buccaneer Media, and is now returning for season two on February 19.

Rosenfeldt says that when he first started to work on the original show, he didn’t think beyond season one; the story had to be wrapped up and satisfying just in case the drama didn’t have a life beyond that first season. An obvious challenge when approaching the second season, therefore, was to deliver the ingredients that struck a chord with the audience the first time round, but to present them in a way that feels fresh.

The second season of Marcella sees Anna Friel return as the London detective

“We liked a lot from season one,” says Rosenfeldt, best known as the creator of Nordic noir smash hit The Bridge. “We are keeping the multi-plot and are dipping into London in different places with different characters and keeping the idea that, at first, you don’t really know how they’re connected to our case or our protagonist.”

Larder executive produces the series alongside Rosenfeldt and Buccaneer Media founder Tony Wood, with Cineflix Rights distributing the drama. She says defining the show’s USP was a key conversation when they embarked on season two, adding: “What we realised is that Marcella will have to go through an absolute storm emotionally and psychologically as she did in season one, and that she will also be investigating a serial killer. That is part of our brand.”

Larder says the case under investigation will be linked to Marcella because that is also part of the show’s DNA. “In some people’s eyes, that’s coincidence but for us it’s part of our brand,” she adds. “As long as we have good, exciting material which makes Marcella fight harder to get justice, I don’t think our audience will care that there was a personal connection to the crime last time too.”

As is typically the case for sequels, season two will be darker, more challenging and editorially bolder, as the story bar had already been set high in season one. The headline from ITV when talking about bringing the show back was that they were interested in Marcella’s character-defining blackouts or ‘fugue attacks.’ Rosenfeldt says: “We needed to do something with them. We couldn’t just have them appearing again and causing her trouble. What we’re doing this time is we’re digging further into the reasons why she’s having them.”

Writer Hans Rosenfeldt attends a readthrough

With his responsibilities on The Bridge now wrapped up following a fourth and final season that debuted in Denmark and Sweden last month, Rosenfeldt has written seven out of eight episodes while The Bridge co-writer Camilla Ahlgren takes one. He has also moved to London, is writing later drafts in English and has factored in a longer lead time for scripts.

“I’ve written shorter scripts this time around,” says Rosenfeldt. “Last time they were a bit long and we had to make choices in the edit to lose things. They were perfectly good and would’ve been great, but time didn’t allow it. This time we get more of what’s actually there on the screen, which is really good.”

Having set up the show in season one, director Charles Martin has come back to work on this new run, which has helped with the continuity of tone and style. However, a delay in getting season two greenlit meant many of Martin’s previous creative team weren’t available, so he had to assemble a new one.

“The important thing was not to try to reinvent the wheel but to make something that inhabits the same universe,” the director says. “We used a different camera but we used the same lenses.”

Nigel Planer (left) and Keith Allen also appear in the drama

Martin already had a template for the show. “The story here is reasonably heightened and, therefore, I didn’t want to do anything too arty. I wanted to do something that had its own look but didn’t feel artificial or forced. I wanted to do something quite straight because what’s not straight here is the story.”

One of Martin’s biggest challenges was that while season one was shot in the autumn, this time they were shooting in the height of summer. “We wanted to make sure the series remained saturated with colour, so there was a richness to it,” adds Larder. “We also pulled many antisocial hours on the unit to get as much night as we could. There’s an element of voyeurism to the shooting style, so even if you’re in a bright London square, there’s a danger to it because of how it’s filmed. Reviewing it in the edit, you don’t notice it’s seasonally different.”

Every noir needs an iconic coat or jumper, and the change in seasons impacted Marcella’s choice of attire, with the detective usually clad in her distinctive parka. “We chose the coat in season one because we wanted Marcella to have a really immediately identifiable silhouette in any dark shady place because we were going to be picking her out at night,” says Larder. “In a practical sense, we needed our actress to be warm. Then, in turn, it became something she worked with, performed with.” This season Marcella’s coat is different but, apparently, just as good.

While initially Rosenfeldt wasn’t looking much further than making season one a hit, he says this time he’s already thinking about season three. “We are setting up for season three at the end of two,” he says. “Season two will still be a very good standalone but, if season three happens, we know exactly what we want to do with it.”

The term ‘difficult second album’ is well known in the music industry and similarly in TV there’s always going to be pressure to live up to the success of the first season. “Our ambition wasn’t to just do what we did before, but to better it,” says Larder. “We wanted to embrace the bravery we had in season one when there weren’t half as many expectations. What I think I’m most proud of is that the storytelling is even stronger and what Marcella goes through is even more surprising. So we’ve not lost our boldness. Boldness is our brand.”